Law Of Freedom Part Three
Category: Law and the Bible
You shall have no other gods before Me. [ Exodus 20:3]
In the first installment of this series, we established that the Ten Commandments are the foundation for the laws of our land. We reviewed why God is the authority for law and how religion influences the laws of the land but that all nations are required (regardless of their beliefs) to obey the laws of God. We then revealed Scripture's claim that all lawmakers and all nations are under the authority of Christ and we compared how laws that originate with man are more oppressive than laws that originate with God.
The second installment was directed to the topic of mans' desire to be the source of law and that the kings of the earth have tried to usurp the laws of God. We concluded that study with a comparison of the early church and the modern church: how the early believers lost their lives because they stood against the laws of man. They were not in defiance of civil governments but their faith was in Christ's absolute authority and they refused to subject His authority and His church to the will of Caesar. On the other hand, we see a modern church that has been blindsided by relativism and has willingly subjected Christ's authority to the authority of man for the sake of keeping a seat at the table and appearing reasonable and tolerant. God save us.
Snapshot of Our Small gods
In Isaiah chapter five, the prophet lists six "woes" that culminate in a "yet for all this, His anger is not turned away." Following an interlude where Isaiah interjects some adjunct matters, in chapter nine he restates the "yet for all this" arguments three times and completes them with the seventh "woe" to Israel in chapter ten and an eighth "woe" to her enemy. This is an interesting study that you can watch unfold in the Isaiah series (so far the papers which are complete are found only on the web at Cominus Papers). I mention this here only because the focus of God's contention with Israel centers on three issues; three issues that we are guilty of in America and which will set the stage for our downfall. Certainly these three issues are at the core of our moral depravity and eventually our economic upheaval.
- Ignoring God in the midst of catastrophe. This is a manifest of the first of the three "yets" (Isa 9:8-12) where Israel is determined to rebuild to even greater glory after God brought disaster to get their attention. In fact, they said, "The bricks have fallen down but we will rebuild with dressed stones." So God promised to increase their enemies' strength and ambition against them. Should we mention here our federal disaster programs which are fraught with waste and corruption? They are borne on the backs of the productive and eliminate mans' need to look to God and help his brother.
- Solving crisis by managing peoples' lives (regulation), which always leads away from God. This is a common tact for the state to build power - crisis upon crisis - until the peoples' total dependence is upon the nanny state. This is a manifest of the second of the three "yets" (Isa 9:13-17) where the rulers mislead the people (toward state power and away from God) and God promised to have no pity when destruction comes.
- Living life as if personal comfort is the object of existence. Regulation destroys the economic structures and when, or as, the economic base is destroyed, regulation will increase for the benefit of the state and the powerful. Take, for example, the situation in California where businesses have fled by the thousands because they can no longer maintain all the public programs on their backs. Yet, during the recent gubernatorial campaigns one liberal Republican candidate, catering to peoples' debaser side rather than productive side, claims they have to figure out a way to lure those businesses back so they can continue funding the programs. This is a manifest of the third of the three "yets" (Isa 9:18-21) where they devoured each other for wealth and power.
Bureaucrats and Empire Builders
No one in Scripture has more to say about bureaucrats than the prophet, Isaiah. To take up this issue in detail will require a separate paper (watch the Isaiah papers at Cominus Papers). However, there are a few things we need to examine about bureaucrats while on this subject of the First Commandment.
After more than twenty-eight years making a living while (or, even though) building houses, it is an understatement to say that I have had some experience with bureaucrats. I want the reader to understand that there are still some very good bureaucrats who take their job as a public servant seriously - as a servant, and some (though few) of these jobs are necessary. Nonetheless, there are very few left from the old school and the new school teaches them they must build empires to preserve or validate their jobs and that it is their responsibility to make life efficient and safe. They must manage the existence of people because most do not have a clue how to live responsible lives (because we do not know, or ascribe to their set of rules). It seems they breed these people in California and when these people get tired of their micromanaged lives there, they move to another State and bring their micromanagement rules with them. Am I the only one that has noticed, or does it seem that most everyone in almost every city hall these days, at least the younger managers, are from California? Oh, enough said of this. . .
Parkinson's First Law of Bureaucracy (1966) states: "Work increases in terms of the time available for it to be done." The First Corollary is: "Bureaucrats create work mutually for each other." The Second Corollary is: "A bureaucrat wants to multiply his subordinates, not his rivals." During a visit with a Senator from my previous State, she told me it was recently discovered that the county I used to live in (and build in) employed two hundred planners (land use and building). These are the people who make the rules regarding what you can and cannot do on your property, what kind of structures you can build and how much property you must surrender to get your project approved. Two hundred is an enormous number in any county and this was a county of less than a half-million people. Take into account, the cities had their own planners and at least half the people lived in the cities. It is easy to see, with that kind of overhead, the planners had to make enough rules to keep each other busy and every rule was another encroachment on the citizens' liberty and our right to property.
The innocent observations of Parkinson have evolved into an animal that is very close to being out of control. In a recent newsletter (Tuesday report - BEI of Oregon) Dave Upham unwittingly restated and updated Parkinson's law. He wrote:
- Many people who are in high corporate positions will often do what pleases them rather than what is good for others. In other words, if they can enrich themselves at the expense of others and have it appear legal or do it in such a way that they don't believe they'll be discovered, they will do it. This is not the majority of people in these positions, of course. But it is a number significant enough to be very troublesome. (ala, Enron, MCI, Congress, many state governments,. etc.)
- When people acquire power over assets of other people or the people themselves, particularly in government positions, whether elected or appointed, they will take advantage of their situations to enrich themselves. They will also often systematically enlarge their power. (This reaches throughout all levels of government and all levels of our financial system.)
Isaiah saw it and warned against it. For that matter, Samuel saw it when the people demanded a king. It wasn't the mere premise of a king that was disturbing, it was the peoples' rejection of God's authority that was (1Sa 8:5, 7). And it was this longing for mans' rule that precipitated the warnings in chapter eight of First Samuel. In reviewing this chapter you can replace the word "king" with any civil government type that is centered upon man. Speaking through Samuel, God warned the people the king would take their sons as soldiers and laborers and take your daughters in the king's service. "He will take the best of your fields," and tax your production and property and give the spoils to his political supporters and you will become indentured servants (does it say that? Yes, read it again).
It is true, in our nation, the king has taken many in his service and they are the best paid and have the best pension, but it is accomplished on the backs of the productive and the ratio of the regulators to producers is growing exponentially - because everyone wants the good paying jobs, government jobs are expanding. This will eventually implode as the regulators make rules upon rules that hamstring the producers, whose production it is that pay the salaries of the regulators. There will be ever-growing overhead chasing ever?shrinking revenues. Nonetheless, well paid, or not, the bureaucrat has indentured himself to the civil government, so also the citizen because we all have our hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. If you don't think you are an indentured servant, you obviously have not read your income and inheritance tax laws and probably have no idea what your property tax is. "You will cry out for relief from the kingdom of man, but the Lord will not hear you." [1Sa 8:18; slight paraphrase]
Isaiah warned that when we leave the laws of God, our bureaucrats and lawmakers will overwhelm us with rule upon rule, law upon law, until we return to the ways of the Lord or become destroyed for our arrogance (Isa 28:9-13). And we are growing more arrogant - even as we are becoming overwhelmed with regulation. We refuse to make a break from our nanny. We have become so deceived that we believe people are harmed when we reduce or eliminate any government program - we refuse to look at the harm the welfare state has inflicted upon our families, communities and individuals, how it has bankrupted small producers, robbed the working class, and made criminals and deadbeat dads out of state-dependant idlers. Meanwhile, our bureaucrats, even our "Christian" bureaucrats continue to build empires - and we have so many programs that we don't need God anymore.
One Nation Under God
Are we espousing a theocracy? On the contrary, a nation can follow the laws of God without a theocracy, on the one hand, and without building upon the kingdom of man, on the other hand. Our Founding Fathers were careful to establish this country on the laws of God and limited government - that is what they meant by declaring this to be a republic - not a democracy. A republic is founded upon law whereas a democracy is majority rule over individual rights and assets. The founding of this nation was not the result of a mere discomfort with status quo. They understood the ramifications of the forms of government and they revolted against an endless procession of kings who put their authority above the authority of the King of Kings and the Maker of all law.
At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams announced, "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven, and from the rising of the sun, let His kingdom come." At the end of the Constitutional Convention that established the form of our government it is reported a woman approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him what the men had given the nation and he answered, "A republic - if you can keep it." Noah Webster added to this what our Founding Fathers clearly understood, ". . .our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible."
John Adams observed, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Because we have rejected the Christian foundation of our nation and the majority of Christians are willing to surrender control of our civil politic to the pagans, is it any wonder that our courts have evolved precedent that previously acknowledged God's providence into an enlightened legal theory that excludes God altogether in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity"? Tolerance and Diversity: two modern gods similar to the ancient gods, Asherah and Baal (rule of man, abortion, human sacrifice, homosexuality and sensual pleasure).
The Death of Mans' god
Isaiah warns us that self-interested politicians will be the ruin of the nation. They will continue their destruction right up to the end because they fail to recognize when the end is at hand - as it is today (Isa 56:10-12). Just as in Jerusalem of old, we are drunk on power and corruption. Bureaucracy has drained our liberties and resources and our leaders cannot lead. All are corrupt and there are no sons to rescue their mother, or country (Isa 51:17-18).
We live in a corrupt age where even Christians in authority have deceived themselves into believing that government programs are built on compassion. The fact remains that programs breed dependency upon the state and the state becomes a god. This god destroys liberty and blinds man to his need for the true God. But God will not be mocked and Christ will rule in righteousness and justice.
Are all nations required to obey the laws of God? or is that mandate given to Israel alone? We are going to talk about that as we get deeper into this series on the Law of Freedom. Meanwhile, a word of wisdom for all you kings (bureaucrats, judges and elected officials): "Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for His wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him." [Psa 2:10-12]
That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principle concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living... After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. --Alexis de Tocqueville, discussing "What sort of despotism democratic nations have to fear", as quoted in Bureaucracy and the American Economy, p 289.
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